Disney reloaded

Disneyland is great, there is no questioning that but it is very interesting how different your experiences there can be. The first time Bekki and I were on our own, exploring the park, taking rides that appealed to us and enjoyed to just stroll around the park. This time we went there with a group of people who had all been there multiple times and knew all the good rides and fun places to go and drag you along that you hardly have any time to soak up all the wonderful impressions around you. The second time was definitely more fun but I also really enjoyed the first time with all its dreaminess and its romance and I am very happy that we were lucky enough to experience both ways and in that order.

Kenny took us there at around 11 o'clock, we were a bit earlier than the others, and we decided to go into California Adventure first, where Bekki and I hadn't been yet and we went straight to the only rollercoaster. Bekki had never been on one before and she was very exited for her first ride. It looked good from the ground, with a lot of steep kurves and a looping but it was quite slow and it lacked the final kick that gives you the butterflies in the tummy. Nevertheless it was good fun and Kenny took a video of the ride which isn't very exiting but it's kind of funny to hear me scream.

(I'll try to post the video here when my Computer goes back to normal, it's killing me at the moment)

We met the others, Dani, Mike, Lauren, Ivy, and Lauren, at the "Hollywood, Tower of Terror", the only ride that has the potential to give you the thrills, and had a really good day with them. We rode some rides and stood in line for a long time which wasn't so bad because we had great company. It was a rather wet and cold day and after a few hours the light drizzle turned into heavy rain that drenched us to the bones. It stayed like that for the rest of the day but it didn't have any impact on the good time we had.

For lunch we left the park because the food in there is so expensive, and went to a place called Mimi's, which looked far to classy for that group of wet and loud people that we were but they treated us very well and fed us with so much free bread, that we were already full when they took our orders and we only bought cups of soup or little entrees.

We stayed in the park until 11pm and had such a fun day with all these wonderful people and it made me so thankful for how everything had worked out for Bekki and me and for all the great things we are experiencing here. Lucky us...

Superheroes in rain gear!

The rest of the crew at the end of the day: Bekki, Lauren, Mike Kenny and I

And back again...

It took us a while to get to Newport and when we finally arrived it was almost noon. Jason was in the lab and the bus dropped us off close to where we had been surfing the day before but we didn't have a clou how to get to Newport. The most logical thing for us to do was to go and get a coffee first and then to worry about everything else.We found a nice litte shop in which a few men were having their after-surf coffee. We asked from where we could catch a bus to Long Beach but they didn't know that either. Instead one of them offered to give us a ride to Sunset beach, which is just before Long Beach and so we threw our stuff in the back of his truck (everyone here laughts when I say ute) and enjoyed the ride. He was an experienced surfer and shaper and I could get some helpful information from him about beaches and breaks in the area. He dropped us of in a big parking area, we had brunch at Subway and waited there for a while, planning our next steps. I had called Kenny and we could stay with him but he was working for another couple of hours which gave us some time to do our own stuff. The only problem was though, that we didn't really have own stuff to do so we walked to the beach, checked the surf, there was no swell at all and decided to chill at the beach. I had a little bit of spiced rum left and some coke which made me very happy and Bekki finally had the time to get her new sketch book out and to draw something which she should do a lot more often because she is very talented. It was nice at the beach, maybe a little bit chilly but very lonely and peaceful and time didn't seem to matter anything then. We just sat for a while, talked and watched the birds until Kenny called that he could pick us up. He was invited to holiday celebration at his old school to which he wanted to and we followed him happiely because he had told us they would have free food. I don't know about everyone else but free food always works for me... It was a good decision to go! There was a big buffet with a lot of different things like cheeses, bruchetta, tiny spinache and feta pies and so on. They also had coffee, eggnog and hot apple cidre, which went well with the fancy little desserts (my favorite was the white chocolate tart with Mango). We met one of Kenny's friends and her parents there with whom we chatted while we feasted and Bekki found a pair of headphones that she bought with a really good discount.Stuffed and happy we drove back to Kenny's place but on our way we passed a pumpkin patch with pumpkins for only 1$. We got really exited about making pumpkin pie out of them and raced home with some nice ones. Brianne, Kenny's girlfriend came over and helped us and we had a lot of fun making those pies from scratch. The next day we slept in and had pumpkin pie for breakfeast (yummmmmmm) before we went to Portfolio, our favorite coffe place where we me Dani who we hadn't seen in a few days. We decided to get some more pumpkins, Dani wanted some to, and to our great surprise they were for free. It was the last day before the pumpkin patch was being transformed into a christmas tree lot and they were trying to get rid of the last pumpkins with which we gladly helped. Dani took about 15, Kenny almost 50 pumpkins of all sizes with the plan to make as many pies as he could eat. Bekki and I went back to Dani's where we made pizza with arugula salad and (who would have guessed) pumpkin. Because all our stuff was at Kenny's place we went there and ended up playing another game of Catan with Brianne and Mike until 3 o'clock in the morning. It was a slow and unenthusiastic game and everyone seemed to be a bit annoyed that no one stood up and stopped it because all of us had to get up early for Disneyland.

My future car, I just wished I could have put some of the stuff on my back into it...

My boards, my bags my rum 'n' coke and my beautiful girlfriend at the beach. What more do you need?

I wanted to go for a surf later on and the wetsuits were still wet...

Indecicive times

We had originally planned to stay no longer than two days with Dani but had always delayed our departure for one or two days because we liked her so much and had such a great time with her. On Tuesday we decided to leave her some space, we were blocking her entire room with our bed and stuff, but we were very certain to come back some day. Our plan was to take the train to San Diego, where we would spend the week before we returned to LA to go to Disneyland with Kenny. We had tried to contact several people down there but hadn't found a place to stay by that time so we texted Mike, a CouchSurfer from Hollywood with whom we had been in contact for a while, and asked if we could stay with him for that night. He was happy to have us next to another CouchSurfer and we headed off towards Hollywood after doing our laundry (my first time with a coin laundry machine). It takes quite a while to get into LA from here and it was already dark when we arrived but we met Mike and Julia, the girl who was staying with him, in a near supermarket where we shopped for dinner before we went to his place. Julia, a really nice and beautiful girl from St.Petersburg in Russia made us real Russian Blinis and one of Mike's friends came over to eat with us. We had a really cool evening and we heard a lot of stories about LA, movie making and far to expensive productions (both of them worked in the film biz, but the cool one, where they get to blow up stuff...).
Mike was also very interested in Australia because he was leaving in three days and we told him about places we've been to that we liked. It was so much fun and I enjoyed listening to those stories a lot.
The next day we actually wanted to take of to San Diego but we still hadn't heard back from anyone and when Mike asked us if we wanted to join Julia and him on a trip to Venice beach we decided to wait til the afternoon and went to the beach. It was a nice day, a slight breeze was blowing but the sun warmed us while we went for a walk on the Venice pier and the world famous promenade with all the hippie stores, the street vendors and the homeless people. I even found an old and shabby longboard deck which I bought for 15$ that made me very happy. We met another friend, who lived down there, for lunch and they showed us around the area a bit more and told us about theold and apparently really good public transport system that was then bought and destroyed by the car lobby because they wanted to make the people of LA dependent on cars. Through that they fucked up the whole city but probably earned a shit ton of money... 
Mike had found an outdoor store where he wanted to buy a bag for his trip and he used that opportunity to show us the 3rd street promenade, the big shopping street of Santa Monica. We found a bag and some shoes and headed home in the middle of the after work rush hour and I can tell you: You don't want to be driving, when all the other 6 million people that live here drive home! It was a good example for how the car industry had screwed up the city, when they had wrecked the public transport. It took us over 2 hours to get home (only about 11 miles) and by the time we arrived it was already time for us to leave for the last train to San Diego. We hadn't packed though and were both very tired from the long day at the beach and Mike offered us to stay for another night so we stayed, had another evening with him and Julia and made the decision not to drive down but to stay in the area, it was already Thursday and we were meeting Kenny on Sunday.
Mike is a professional photographer and he has a great camera with witch he took some cool pics.

A few weeks ago Rasmus had told me about Jason, this guy from CA who he had met while traveling in New Zealand and told me I should contact him when I was there. I had befriended him on Facebook before and called him that night to see if he had a place for us to stay for a day or two and he invited us to his place in Irvine for the next day. We left Hollywood early in the morning and took the train to Irvine where Jason picked us up. He surfed too and we got along well from the first minute. He had a lot of stories to tell about his travels and seemed to be a really relaxed and nice guy. He took us to a beach called Newport Beach to check the surf even though the forecast didn't look very good but it was actually OK. The swell was small but super clean and it broke in nice peaks all along the beach. We jumped into our wetsuits and jogged down to the beach for a session that turned out to be a lot of fun. It was really cool to have someone out there to talk to and we convinced Bekki to come as well which made me very happy. Jason had to go back to his lab in the afternoon but he dropped us off at his place before he left, where we met his room mate who was nice but didn't stay for long. We relaxed for the rest of the day, checked out the stores close by and made new plans because Jason was leaving the next day and couldn't host us for longer. Jason came back in the evening and made a Mexican dinner for us (his favorite food) and a couple from Norway he had just met came over for a drink. It was a really cool evening, I particularly liked to talk about strange American ways with the Norwegians, and I'm very glad to have contacted Jason because he is such a great guy. We slept on the floor in the living room that night but Jason gave us his sleeping bag which helped and I didn't have a problem falling asleep at all. I think I dreamed of surfing...

Dani California

We left Wade and Sunny in the afternoon to catch the metro connection down to Long Beach. The ride took longer than we thought but we got picked up from the station by our host Danielle who took us back to her place, a small flat with a nice little garden with an avocado tree and fig trees. All of us were quite exited about meeting each other but it was clear from the first moment, that we would have a good time staying with her. Dani was very open from the first moment, she sacrificed her entire living room for our bed and made us feel very warmly welcome. Leo, a good friend of Dani's came over and we went out for pizza, which was great fun and good to get to know each other because we talked a lot that night. We went home with a bottle of wine (we aren't allowed to drink any alcohol yet...) and to me it felt that we had already found a very good friend. The next day Dani had to work but she took us to Huntington Beach (also known as Surfcity USA), and showed us where we could look for a new surfboard. She even gave us the keys for her car and her house, on the first day(!) and let us drive around with it. We shopped through the surf shops searching for a a cheap used board and found one in a small shaping room. Because I had my own fins and leash I got them down to 100$ and he even fixed the small dings it had for me. I couldn't believe the bargain I had just made and I was very happy for the rest of the day. Bekki wasn't as lucky with her board repair but she still got a good price. We picked Dani up from work and went home to make something to eat out of a pumpkin that we had bought on the way back. We were really exited about the meal because we didn't really know what we were doing but it turned out as a very tasty pumpkin salad with a lot of other stuff in between.
For the next day Dani had arranged that the crew she usually sails with would take us with them on a cruise. Unfortunately she had to work and couldn't come. We met Greg at 11:11am on the 11/11/11, a sailing friend, after we had pancakes for breakfast at the restaurant where Dani's sister works. It took a while before the crew was complete but we used that time ti rig up the boats, very nice "Schilds", and chat with Greg. We left with two boats, the weather was nice and sunny, inspite of the bad weather warnings that were all over the radio, and a light breeze blowing. When we got out of the harbor however, the wind had completely died down and we were only drifting around. It got so bad that we had to drop the anchor, the boats didn't have motors, after 40 minutes of fighting against the current to make sure we wouldn't get pushed into the break wall that protects the Long Beach harbor. We had to wait quite a long time for some wind to come up but it was a warm day and we had a good time waiting. By the time we got back it was almost dark. The light in the sky was amazing, we still had sunshine but a storm was building in the north and the clouds were glowing from the inside and sometimes a streak of light would come through to us. It was truly magnificent.

My crew. Greg, Bekki, Dennis and Marty

Isn't that a beautiful boat?

L.A. from sea.

On Friday the storm came. It was just rain, but everyone called it a storm which sounds a lot more dramatic. The bad thing about the storm was that most people tell you not to surf after heavy rainfall for at least 72 hours because all the yuck from the city gets washed into the ocean but the waves after the storm are often very good...
We had a lazy day indoors and in the evening we got invited to a board game night with Dani's friends. We didn't know it at that time that this game night would have a big impact on our time in the US. We had a fun evening playing "Die Siedler von Catan" and met some really cool people. Kenny, who was hosting the game night told us that he worked at Disneyland and said, after he heard that we have never been there before, that he could get us in for free. Needless to say, we loved the idea and accepted the offer gratefully. We arranged to meet the next Sunday to visit the park and we were very happy and exited on the way back home.
We took on the next day very slowly, slept in and had a look around the little shops in the area, on the search for longboard decks but without any luck. I went home and Bekki kept looking around with the inexhaustible stamina that only women have when shopping and was very proud to present to me her new sketch book. We changed the Disney-Day to Monday because that was better for Kenny and that was pretty much everything we did...
I ignored the 72 hour-after-rain-not-surf advice and went out on Sunday. It was a really nice day with hardly any wind and a little bit of swell coming in, just the right amount for me to get used to my new board. It was a bit tricky in the beginning, because I had never had a board of that size before and I kept nosediving it or I couldn't gain enough speed but it's fine now and I love that board. After the surf we walked around Huntington, had something to eat, Bekki ate one of the legendary fish tacos, and checked some stores for a board for Dani. We found a nice and floaty fish that appealed to her not only because of the pinkish coloring :) but we didn't buy it. In the evening we met another friend of Dani's, Lea and a guy called John who had some cool stories to tell about his work with polar bears in the arctic circle that involved shooting (only to administer an anesthesia) and out door operations. We went out for dinner with them and planned on seeing a Jazz band play with some more friends. Unfortunately they played in a bar and we got kicked out for not being 21 and not even  telling them that we were German made them change their mind so Bekki and I went back to Dani's place which luckily wasn't very far away and watched a movie.
Monday was Disney-Day but before we left Dani and I went for a surf get something out of the last waves that week and it was a really good surf. After that was done she gave us a lift to Disneyland where she dropped us off at the parking lot. There is so much going on around the two parks, with stands, shops and food places and you dive into the world of Disney long before you're inside the park. We met Kenny in front of the entrance, he let us in and showed us around a bit. It is a small world in itself, colorful, innocent and magical that brings back your childhood very clearly and even though it's  more a place for kids you can have a really good time there. To be honest though, all of this sounds a bit dull, when I try to describe it, it is something you have to see and experience yourself.
We had fun on some rides, which are made for kids and therefor not very exiting but created with so much love for the detail that they are great to enjoy and look at, but the part I enjoyed most was to just walk around and look at everything. It is truly incredible how Walt Disney and all of his little helpers have managed to create a whole new world around his ideas and to see the love they have put into it.
Kenny joined us for a while, went and came back later to show us around and chat and we got to know him a little bit which was nice. As it got dark people gathered around the lit castle awaiting the fireworks. It was the first day of Christmas at Disneyland and everything was decorated accordingly so the castle looked even dreamier and when the fireworks finally started we stood and watched the spectacle in awe. It is hard for me to believe that they do that every night which takes all the magic out of it for me but I didn't even think about that then. They made it snow after the fireworks ended and it was so romantic to stand there with Bekki and to be pulled into this beautiful world of good and happiness.
We met Kenny outside the park, he had offered to give us a ride back home, and talked about our day. Kenny is what I would call a Disney veteran and even though he has been there countless times he still loves it there. We became really good friends and he invited us to his place and offered us a place to stay if we needed one. Before he dropped us of he had the idea to take us to the park a second time but to join us with a few friends and to show us the California Adventure park as well which is right next to Disneyland. He said he would organize something before we got out of the car went inside and sunk into bed, tired but happy.

Haha, not the nicest pic but my only one...

Hollywood

It was surprisingly easy to get into the US. Everyone we met had told us how strict the regulations are, how annoying it is and how long it takes to get through all of the different controls. The immigration officer did ask a few strange questions but he does that, how we found out later, to watch and read your reaction. It's still a bit weird but a lot better than to be pulled aside and being forced to open and ransack your bag which we thought would be the way they welcome the people who they think aren't criminal.
Once we were through the controls the next problem came up. A rather big problem. "Where now?" was the big question we hadn't really thought about properly. We wanted to try to CouchSurf through America but hadn't successfully contacted a host and we had no internet to check if somebody had responded to our last minute request. We had checked out some hostels but hadn't bothered to write down the address so we had no idea where to go. We wandered around the airport for a while searching for a competent information and found a place with expensive but fast internet. We checked our e-mails and our CouchSurfing profile in only five minutes and to our great surprise and relief had received an answer to our last minute couch request. To guys had replied and said we could stay with them. We were very relieved and followed their directions out of the airport which was a lifesaver for itself...
We had to take a bus and then a Metro, they lived all the way up in North Hollywood, and we needed to find a mobile store to buy an American prepaid card so we stopped at Union Station, the central bus and train station, sent a package with stuff home, had a coffee and organized our contacts from there through the internet and a coin phone, which was exiting because I don't think that I've ever used one of those by my self before. It was getting dark when we finally arrived at North Hollywood station, where an interested and friendly stranger led us to the next T-Mobile store. We had a working cellphone at last which meant that we could contact our hosts directly who picked us up a few minutes later.
Their apartment was quite small and full with all sorts of stuff but very cool and Wade and Sunny, our hosts, welcomed us warmly into their home. We were a bit nervous because it was our first CouchSurfing experience and didn't really know what to do but they were so nice and made us feel very comfortable that we quickly forgot our worries.
We had a nice evening talking about LA and the whole showbiz thing, America and Couchsurfing. After dinner they drove us around the area and showed us places like the Warner Brothers building, the Disney Studios and Universal city before they took us to the Griffith Observatory, near the famous Hollywood sign, from where we could see over most of LA. It was a very clear night and I don't remember having seen anything like that before. LA is a very spread out city and it looks incredible with all the lights, all the way to the ocean, the different areas of the city and the planes soaring above all.

In the middle you see the relatively small downtown area, the ocean is at the far back and the rest is part of the huge LA county

Later that night when we lay in bed all the impressions of the day came back and for the first time we actually had the chance and the leisure to review our first day in America. It had been a great day. Very exhausting for sure and also a bit lucky but all in all very positive and rewarding. I think the biggest mistake I had made imagining California was to think it would be in any way European. It was just different to anything I had experienced before. People you met on the streets were very strange, everyone in his/her own way, but mostly friendly and interested in the young couple wandering around with far too many bags and a Surfboard in the middle of such a big city. Something that Wade had said before turned out to be very true as well: In America and especially in LA, everything is BIG. The roads, the cars, the servings in restaurants etc. It seems to be very important to have something bigger than the others and even if you aren't wealthy you pretend that you are.
The next morning Wade took us to a coffee place where apparently a lot of celebrities go to but we didn't see any :( We spent the day in Hollywood, doing a lot of tourist things like the Walk of Fame, the Kodak- and the Chinese Theater which we hadn't intended to do but it was kind of cool to see all those places you see on TV so often. We also went Downtown where we had lunch but there wasn't much to see except you are really into tall business buildings. In the afternoon we went back to pack our stuff together and Wade drove us to the next Metro station from where we would get to our next host. It was sad to leave these great guys so soon after we met them and we are very thankful that they accommodated us on such short notice with so much warmth but we had already arranged our next stay to which we were looking forward as well.

The staircase to the Oscars...

There was no red carpet for us though

Bamboo

We had another two days on Viti Levu, the main island, before we had to leave. We arrived around noon with the Mana Flyer and I was very glad to stand on ground that wasn't rocking because my hangover had turned out to be worse than I tought. We checked in at Bamboo, the hostel we stayed at before we went to the island and it was great to see that a lot of people who we had met before were still there. We chilled around the hostel, went swimming in jucky and stinging water and played volleyball for the rest of the day. It was a small Kava circle that night but I met a few girls who wanted to get rid of their Wiskey and so I helped them make it go away...
The next day was very similar to the one before except that we started to hang around earlier. It was so warm that it was exhausting to move and the hostel sold 1F$ soda cans which eliminated every reason to leave the property. We tried to organize a trip to a beach that is meant to be the nicest beach in Fiji and in the top ten list of the worlds best beaches but it was quite hard to get there and we gave up after a while. It was even to hot to think hard!
On our last day, we flew out at night, we decided that we had to do something so we took the bus into town with a cool German dude. We walked around the markets and the main street before we had lunch where we met another German traveller. We stayed in town til 3pm and took the bus back where we hung out a bit more. It was really such a good time there and I enjoyed it a lot, even though beach and water weren't nice at all. I played a last match of Volleyball before we had to start packing and left at about 7pm with the free airport shuttle. It was sad to say goodbye to that loveley place and all the cool people we had met during our stay there but also exiting to travel on to America.